Joni Deutsch is an award-winning audio professional and NPR veteran with 15 years of outstanding experience as a producer/host, content manager, and marketer/audience growth specialist. 

New York Festivals: Tell us more about The Podglomerate and how the company supports podcasts and audio storytellers. 

The podcast industry is evolving at such a rapid pace, and between optimizing production, growing audience, and selling ads, it can be a daunting task for any storyteller to maintain – let alone scale – their show when they have a lot on their plate.  

That’s where The Podglomerate comes in. We’re the award-winning podcast services firm specialized in production, marketing, and monetization of outstanding audio content.  

The Podglomerate was founded in 2017 with the ambition to make the podcasting ecosystem more accessible to publishers by solving the labor problem at an affordable price point. The Podglomerate provides tailored services to handle end-to-end production needs (we’re the production home of award-winning series including Missing Pages and Podcast Perspectives), marketing/audience development (including publicity, owned/internal media audits, cross-promotions, podcast app features, paid advertising, award submissions, and more), and monetization efforts (we’ve unlocked more than $2 million for our monetization clients to-date using a combination of tech stack, direct sales, agency sales, and programmatic sales). 

Fast forward to 2025, and The Podglomerate has grown to represent more than 70 podcasts accounting for more than 30 million monthly downloads, with shows topping the podcast charts and receiving features on every major podcast distribution app with national coverage across print, digital, radio, and television. The Podglomerate’s guiding principle is to meet the podcast audience where they are, using a data-driven approach to provide marked growth for some of the biggest podcast clients in the world, including Freakonomics Radio, Netflix, The Boston Globe, NPR, PBS, Hubspot, Harvard, Substack, and more. That includes New York Festivals Radio Award winners, including The Lever’s Master Plan podcast (the 2025 The National Press Club Award recipient). 

The Podglomerate's expertise is frequently cited as a podcast industry leader across major media outlets (including Bloomberg, Business Insider, The Verge, and Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab), in addition to being spotlight on national stages and speaking engagements ranging from SXSW to Podcast Movement. And in 2025, The Boston Globe named The Podglomerate one of "New England’s Fastest Growing Companies.” 

Needless to say, The Podglomerate has a proven track-record of helping clients scale content and find audience – easily, efficiently, and affordably! 

New York Festivals: What are the most profound changes you’ve noticed in the art of storytelling in the past 5 years? 

There is a growing appetite for storytelling, from the amount of stories being produced to the growing amount of listeners discovering these stories. The difference from 2020 to 2025 is how and where that story is being enjoyed (whether as an on-demand podcast as compared to a live radio program, a short-form video clip on YouTube versus a long-form video podcast on Spotify, etc.), not to mention how accessible platforms have become for audiences to participate in the storytelling (voice memos, comments, polls, etc.) and become storytellers themselves in an easy and affordable way (for instance, a listener can become a video podcaster in a manner of minutes). 

I’ve always found podcasting to be one of the greatest equalizers in media, allowing for anyone and everyone to share their voice, and the “2024 podcast election” has underlined the growing influence of the medium and why it’s important to dedicate time and care to it. 

New York Festivals: What are common questions you receive about marketing podcasts? And what are your recommendations for how to grow an audience for audio storytelling? 

We’ve received a wide range of questions over the years about podcast strategy, including “How can I grow my podcast audience without a budget?” and “How can I get my podcast featured on apps like Apple Podcasts and Spotify?” and also “How do I win a podcast award?” 

The rule of thumb is knowing who your audience is (whether it’s a new listener hearing a promo for your podcast for the first time, or an editorial lead at a platform or outlet that could cover your podcast, or even a judge for an awards competition reviewing your submission materials), and how you can frame yourself and your show to them in an eye-catching and succinct way as you draft your materials. In other words, what is your elevator pitch, and how does your show stand out? 

New York Festivals: What types of technology do you find yourself using? 

I’m a proud Sony Professional headset owner, which was a staple from my public radio days as an audio producer and host. For my day-to-day projects, my go-to platforms are Notion and Airtable for campaign management, Zoom and Fathom for client and team meetings, Slack for team communications, and Descript for audio transcriptions. 

New York Festivals: Share your thoughts about the future of audio storytelling. 

There will always be a need for audio storytelling, but the process (from how it’s produced to where it is distributed to) will continue to evolve with the times. For better or worse, AI will have some role to play in this conversation. But at its core, audio storytelling has been and will always be a truly human and intimate medium that will stand the test of time.